Events
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Process Philosophy in Under-Explored Traditions in Philosophical History: An Online Conference
This conference will be the first to birth this long overdue intellectual exchange as it offers an improved metaphysical framework for value and consciousness in all ontological entities to address various concerns that are facing humanity: economy, political, and environmental. Although there are hesitant answers to some of these global challenges facing humanity, the influence of substance-based analysis has yet to offer penetrative answers, in addition to the almost complete lack of interaction among scholars of process to explore their common ground for a common voice in the way that substance thought has done over the centuries.
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Is There Ever a “Just” War? A Process-Relational Reframing of Power, God, and Violence | Sheri Kling
In a time of rising global conflict and polarized rhetoric, this presentation explores the enduring question, Is there ever a “just” war? Drawing on process-relational theology and engaging voices such as Alfred North Whitehead, Thomas Jay Oord, Walter Wink, Catherine Keller, and Parker J. Palmer, Sheri D. Kling, director of Process & Faith, reframes traditional just war thinking through a relational lens that challenges assumptions about power, control, and violence.
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Hasidic Storytelling and Spiritual Development: A Field Report | Rabbi Or Rose
In this session, Rabbi Or Rose will explore a well-known Hasidic tale about mentorship and Torah study. In so doing, we will analyze the ways in which the storyteller calls us to heightened consciousness about the presence of divinity throughout the created world. Rabbi Rose will also examine how this story serves as a model of the power of storytelling as a sacred practice.
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Ecological Artistry from the Garden Studio | Melissa Cowper-Smith
In this SPARKS Exchange Melissa Cowper-Smith will be sharing about her Artists Garden, where she gathers materials she transforms through her creative process. Her art is expressed through beekeeping, papermaking, fiber arts of weaving and spinning, and encaustic painting. This session's creative response will be generative scribing, where we gather words throughout the session that evoke the materiality of Melissa's process. To wrap-up the session, participants will weave these words into poetry.
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Education and the Homo Ludens Hypothesis | Daniel Dombrowski
The philosopher George Allan—in three well-written books in philosophy of education—applies the Homo Ludens hypothesis to education, especially to higher education. College education at its best is a type of dynamic play. Allan’s contribution to the Homo Ludens hypothesis has been underappreciated. Allan often relies on the process thought found in Alfred North Whitehead’s classic Aims of Education. The goal of the present presentation is to explore the important contribution Allan can make toward the understanding of the contemporary crumbling of the walls of the cathedral of learning, to use his dramatic metaphor.
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Dementia Dharma: Caregiving Sentient Beings with Neurodegenerative Diseases | Lourdes Arguelles and John Freese
In this session, Lopon Dorje Khandro and Rev. Dr. Dhammabodhi will briefly explore critical intersections between Buddhism, New Paradigm Sciences, and the Practicalities of Dementia Caregiving in the United States. They will focus on how to maintain a radical compassionate caregiving presence, insure the provision of essential and non-exploitative care, and recognize the “luminous mind” while serving humans and animals whose physical capacities, cognitive functions, and identities are fading. The presenters will also share their main Buddhist and caregiving practices such as Tonglen (sending and taking), Chod (cutting practice), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and some new and old visual, sound, touch and olfactory therapies.
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Global Economic Governance: The Case of Trade, Economic Development, and AI | Douglas Lippoldt
In his presentation, Doug Lippoldt will illustrate manifestations of systemic challenges using a sectoral case study approach focused on a set of middle-income developing countries striving to engage more deeply in the AI economy. The sample will include countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
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Process Pop-Up: A Process-Relational Approach to Teaching Science
In this process pop-up, Christie Byers will explore what it might mean to teach science as if the world were alive. Drawing on Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy, she shares an approach to elementary science education that shifts away from viewing nature as inert and mechanical, and toward experiencing it as relational and participatory, a community of diverse subjects infused with value. Rather than teaching Whitehead’s ideas explicitly, Byers designs her course as an embodied enactment of them, using an "as if" approach, "as if" we are indeed living in a Whiteheadian cosmos, inviting preservice teachers to encounter science through wonder, aesthetic experience, and direct engagement with the more-than-human world.
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Process Pop-Up: Made by Love, For Love: Reimagining God, Power, and Faith
In his new book, Made by Love, for Love, author Michael M. Rose invites readers to reimagine Christianity—not as a drama of sin and obligatory appeasing sacrifice, but as a cosmic love story still unfolding. Far from cracking under the weight of an expanding universe, the gospel becomes more radiant, more necessary, and more astonishing than ever. In this Process Pop-Up, Rose will introduce his project and invite conversation.
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Taking up Whitehead’s Invitation to Explore Our Immediate Experience | Bill Gayner
Bill Gayner will lead a guided contemplation using as a starting point an excerpt from Whitehead’s chapter on philosophic method in Adventures of Ideas. We will then reflect on and discuss the experience including perhaps how these kinds of micropractices can scale up to support professional sensibilities and reflective learning, providing a platform for ongoing adaptation and innovation, and the light this may shed on Whitehead’s own practice.
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Digging for Wisdom and Finding the Words with Leslie King
These days, there are so many vehicles to speak quickly. We can find ourselves speaking before we have our necessary information. We can find ourselves speaking to symptoms rather than the roots of the problem. With so much provocation in the public sector, how can orators in our various vocations find the "tap root" on subjects that are vital for civility and the greater good? With so much temptation to declare opinion and bias on social media outlets, how can the relationship filter recover its integrity?
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Transformation in Practice: The Process of Youth Empowerment in Soweto with Natasha Yen
How does empowerment emerge? Drawing on her experience facilitating youth and community development programs in Kliptown, Soweto, South Africa, Natasha Yen explores how empowerment and transformation unfold in practice. Rather than treating empowerment as a predefined outcome, the presentation explores how it unfolds over time, and how community change becomes possible when people are equipped not only with skills, but also with the belief and capacity to shape their own futures.
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